As a connector of the type, proposal is made of a surface-mount connector described in JP-A-2010-514138 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 1). As shown in FIG. 24, the surface-mount connector described in Patent Document 1 is configured as, for example, a low-profile surface-mount electrical connector (SMEC) 720 which is disposed on one surface of a board 730 together with a light emitting diode (LED) 750 and a resistor 740. In FIG. 24, directions perpendicular to the board 730 and going up and down in the figure are referred to as upward and downward directions, respectively, while a direction along the board 730 is referred to as a horizontal direction.
Herein, the SMEC 720 itself has a low height so that, among light beams emitted by the LED 750, most of the light beams having upward optical paths and obliquely upward optical paths are not interrupted by the SMEC 720. However, a horizontal optical path and some of the obliquely upward optical paths which are nearly horizontal are interrupted by the SMEC 720.
For example, a light beam emitted by the LED 750 in a direction depicted by an arrow A1 in the figure is not interrupted by the SMEC 720 while a light beam emitted by the LED 750 in a direction depicted by an arrow A2 in the figure is interrupted by the SMEC 720.
As mentioned above, there is a problem that the connector interrupts some of the light beams emitted by the LED along the board and, as a result, causes a reduction in amount of outgoing light emitted by an illumination device comprising the LED as a light source.